A Thinking Woman
by oneperfectfit
Summary: She sleeps with monsters in the middle of the night-day. Set against the backdrop of New York City in the winter and summer, Kerry tries to extract what she can of herself from Michel. She is less successful than she might hope.
1. 1 to 3

**Kerry meets Michel in New York in the middle of the winter, in the middle of night. A story for all seasons in groups of 3 parts at a time and 10 parts of three. (That was fun to write.)  
**

**(Formatting didn't work on the strikethrough at the last bit of the chapter, unfortunately. It makes a bit more sense when it's certain parts of it have a strikethrough and double strikethrough through them, but for some reason that doesn't transfer from Word. Kerry is just rambly.) **

**I don't own Companions of the Night. Prompts taken from an old list at I think 31_kisses, but perhaps maybe not. The title will come in later. (By the way, Brooklyn Heights is quite lovely in the summer, as the Lower East Side. During the winter, the LES is vaguely foreboding at night when no one is out and in Brooklyn Heights all of those brownstones on the promenade just look _creepy_.) Please tell me if you think that the rating should go up now, it probably will, eventually.  
**

**The story shall commence now!  
**

* * *

**1) our breaths in winter**

Winter nights in New York City in February. The lights of Midtown make the air icy cold and she is in a part of lower Manhattan where there is just brick and grey and the FDR Drive to her right. Kerry is so, so lost.

She knows that her college is over 100 blocks uptown and on the other side of the island. She knows that she is in Alphabet City, somewhere she shouldn't be at 2 in the morning in February alone. She can't even find the subway, because there isn't one nearby.

Her feet are cold and the wind tunnels created of the avenues push her hair back and her hat almost off. She pinned it down, but she's lost a bobby pin. Her lips are chapped; her being is clenched.

She needs a taxi.

There are none on the streets except for one a block behind her, the lights of the off duty sign mocking her as the taxi driver speeds towards a presumably warm house with hot soup on the stove.

She sits on a stoop and begins to cry.

There are footsteps next to her but Kerry doesn't look up, she doesn't want to. But the voice she hears is slightly mocking yet warm; familiar.

"Fancy seeing you here," he says, sitting elegantly next to her. His hair is long; his skin is once again smooth and unblemished. He is cold, but in this bitter weather her hands are colder than the light touch on her shoulder.

Kerry raises her head. "Ethan- Michel," she corrects herself.

"Michel," he agrees with a nod. "Kerry."

"Yes- that's me. Here, on these steps," she says, nodding stupidly. He exhales, forming a cloud with his breath. Her scarf is iced over with her frozen breaths, chilling her neck. The chill running down her spine is much, much different. Induced.

"Are you all right?" he asks. Kerry nods, and then shakes her head no. Blows out in frustration.

"Cold," she murmurs. "And I'm lost. I need to be in my dorm-"

"Where?" he asks. She sighs. "Columbia. Uptown."

"I know that," Michel says. "Come with me. I have a car."

"Is it stolen?" Kerry asks, remembering. He shakes his head.

"It's a rental. From New Jersey."

"Oh," she says, letting him pull her up and over then in. She sits in the passenger seat of the car and fiddles with the dials, turning on the heat, taking off her scarf and hat, shaking out her hair. When they turn onto what she recognizes as the Brooklyn Bridge her lips part, confused.

"Michel- what- this isn't Morningside Heights-"He chances a look at her.

"We're going to my place in Brooklyn Heights. It's late; you can get on the 2/3 in the morning."

Kerry would argue but she is too tired, too chilled, and the car feels safe.

Despite what she's seen him do. Despite what she's done because of him.

The window is fogging over, and she raises a gloved finger to it. She traces circles in the damp, draws a flower, a heart.

Michel laughs. Kerry just inhales and exhales, nervous. Anticipatory.

* * *

**2) la vie en rose**

Her cheeks are flushed with heat and something else as she sits on the worn couch by the fireplace. His house is a brownstone with a stoop on the promenade, on the river- expensive. There is a brick front and impressive steps, but the inside is almost shabby.

"I haven't been here- lived here- for a while," he says at her confused glance. Kerry nods, then gets up and stares out the window over the East River. She can see the lower tip of Manhattan and if she strains, the silhouette of the Statue of Liberty.

"I'm hungry," she says to him. She thinks he nods at her back, because he says "as am I," but she knows what he is referring to is something very different.

"Um- I just want food."

"Of course," Michel says. "There's a kitchen. I have water and canned soup I believe. It shouldn't be expired."

"You still entertain?" she asks, knowing the answer. His grin is wicked.

"Occasionally-" and he wraps a hand in her hair and spins him to face her so they are nose to forehead. "Surprised?"

"No," she breathes out, feeling her chest rise against him. His breathing is quickening so his heart beats faster, like hers when she is walking. Her heart is rat-tat-tat drumbeating and her blood is warm in her veins.

"Good," he breathes in response. "Good."

He kisses her fiercely, her back pressed up against the window as he pushes her shirt up so her spine is knobs against the glass window. He grabs a breast roughly and squeezes. It feels good but that hurts and she tears her lips away from his (somehow they're warm, how?) and she tries to arch back but ends up pushing further into his hand because it feels good. And he's sucking on her neck- she'll have an evil looking bruise there later- and she gasps out "don't-" because she doesn't want him to bite her.

"I wasn't going to." He says, and when he meets her eyes she can see the actual truth in them and reaches, sucks on his lower lip, slides her hand over the muscles of his back all taught and tense.

"I'm still cold," she mutters, and leans into him. She's so chilled by the window glass and the outside wind that he feels good in even more ways.

"We'll move then," and he yanks off her shirt. A button pops off and falls to the floor and absently Kerry wonders what she's going to wear when she has to go back to Manhattan to her dorm.

With her shirt off and her bra now hanging open she's colder than ever, so he pulls her tighter and moves her to an old armchair. Kerry is seated on his lap and he has easy access to her throat. She arches her neck unwittingly and knowingly.

"You're not-"

"I said I won't."

"Okay."

He doesn't tell her to trust him, and she's glad for that. His lap is comfortable and they're back to the fire. He kisses her again and does something with his hand that makes her gasp and so she's glad her found her, for the moment at least.

The river watches them through the uncovered window, calmly accusingly, dark blue against a grey sky.

* * *

**3) her handwriting**

_Dear Michel,_

_Thank you very much for picking me up on the Lower East Side. I truly didn't know what the hell I was going to do. I was freezing and tired and, of course, it was two in the morning. You truly saved my life. Since I saved yours I guess that it's fair. I'd like to think that we're done now. Every time that I see you it confuses me, and last night was very definitely confusing. Especially since it went kind of quickly. I'd prefer if we not talk about it. (And no, it's not like it'll be complicated because I have a boyfriend. I know that you know that I broke up with him a few weeks ago. You have got to stop following me occasionally. You don't hide from me as well as you think that you do.) I know I'm going to sound like a total bitch, but I don't really want to see you again. You're… different, obviously. And I at least think that you're dangerous. Although you definitely do have your uses._

_Um._

_Look, I've told you so many times starting when I was 16 years old that I _don't want to be a vampire_. I really, truly don't. I think that you want me to turn into one, but I have this feeling that you're waiting for me to become, like, perfect or to turn me at the perfect moment. _

_Please don't. I don't want to be your "companion of the night" like you once said about Regina. Co-vampires sounds pretty horrible to me. I don't think that it's romantic at all. _

_I'm thankful for what you've done for me over the past couple of years. Helping last night was just one of the things that I'm going to add to your list. Maybe you're not as a bad a person as you think you are. Just sort of bad. I'm sorry, I'm really tired and the sun has just risen. When you get this at sundown, you'll know that I've left. I've covered all of the windows in the front room- the ones in the hall were closed, obviously. I put the covers over the shutters in the bedroom window too, so you should be safe. Now please, please let me be safe. I like being human. I like being alive. You're not dead but you're not alive. You're stuck in half, in the middle, and I don't want that for me._

_And Ian can't lose me. He's already lost Mom. _

_I can't trust you to fulfill any of these requests that I'm making, but I'm asking you. As a friend. Not as a lover._

_I don't know if I even love you anymore. I think that I don't._

_I'm leaving now. Don't worry, I'll take the subway. I can take it pretty much straight back to Columbia. I'll be fine. I hope that you'll be fine as well._

_I remember that you said that there were choices beyond choices once and that it would be nice to see my hair in the sunlight. If you take that choice then maybe we still have a chance._

_Love,_

_Sincerely,_

_Yours,_

_Not yours,  
_

- Kerry


	2. 4 to 6

**So, uh, an update! I have been working on this not only in spurts, but also very very very very sporadically. But this is a good thing, maybe, because even though there may have been a wait (was there? cause that would be kind of nice) I worked hard on this, and edited it, and also really like the ending of the fifth and sixth ones. Tension! Excitement! Vampires! We've got it all, I tell ya.**

**-  
**

**4) the language of cities**

It is May, and it is finally, finally warm.

After that night, she has stayed as far away as she could from Brooklyn. But now it is May and the nights are shorter and the days are longer and there is less chance of running into _him_, anyways.

In New York the arrival of summer is marked by street fairs and flowers falling from trees. Kerry revels in both. Her hair doesn't welcome the humidity, but really, that can be dealt with by vicious combing and lots of anti-frizz gel. And it's warm. It's truly wonderful, the heat and the sunlight.

The city is green without envy, and Kerry is light and free. The spring releases her from the events of the winter and she is not only free, she is liberated.

(She refrains from dancing down the subway steps; the city has enough crazy people on the transit system as is.)

Sometimes when she is riding the train to Brooklyn she thinks of him, his smile, his eyes, and then she stops. The rocking of the subway and the rhythm of it as it stops and starts lull her and calm her thoughts until she is back to being normal. Normal as you can be when you are in love with a vampire.

She is not in love with him, she is not. She is a New Yorker, her heart is cold and rushed as anyone else she bumps into on the street who scowls.

(Kerry lies to herself like Michel lied to her back in Brockport.)

It is just after dusk; she is wandering around Gramercy Park.

There are magnificent old houses there, one where Samuel Tilden sat and waited to hear he'd lost the election of 1876 by one electoral vote, one with flickering gas lamps in the moonlight, one that is a very old art club. The flowers through the peeling iron fence are magnificent and vibrant.

Looking back, she is surprised that she had not run into him earlier. She babysits in his neighborhood, a block away from the house he'd taken her to in February.

But she walks smack into him and now that it is warm she feels a chill coming through her thin shirt from him. He is still a vampire, and she wonders if he even read her letter or if he just ignored it, swept it out with the dust that coated the table she had left it on.

"Kerry?" he sounds surprised.

"Wha-" she says, recognizing him by feel.

"I live here." Her question must be written all over her face.

"But- Brooklyn Heights- the promenade-"

"I told you that I hadn't lived there for a while. Here I fit in better."

She looks at the houses and believes it, and feels stupid. This is Michel. While she has slept with him and saved his life and he her, she still can't trust most of what he says. She needs to pay attention to what he says.

(He is still a mystery to her.)

"Right, of course."

He doesn't ask what she's doing all the way from Columbia, but the answer is mundane so she doesn't bother telling him.

He tells himself that he doesn't want to know.

He does.

Kerry promises herself that she will not meet him again, she will not bump into him again, that she will not speak to him again.

She will.

Such is the way of the city.

**5) a tender history in rust**

She does not know why she is back at the park, except that if there is a chance that she will run into him again and she likes having that option of that chance. Gramercy Park is a metal circle enclosed around tulips and benches and gravel. It is a private park, the only one left in Manhattan, one of two left in the city and Michel most likely has a key.

So she walks in circles circling.

The metal gate blocks the center of the circle from her. It is a gate made of iron, entirely elegant and serving its purpose to keep her very much out, like a strong, beautiful length of barbed wire. Michel would have a key, she reasons, because he is very good at squirming into places that he should never be allowed access to her. Not her heart, she thinks furiously, lying to herself because she is so used to the motion by now.

And Kerry starts to run.

There were other people running, walking their dogs, chatting to neighbors, but that was earlier- not now, not at three in the morning when all the lights are out and the street are empty as they ever get, where the human presence is undetectable but she knows that it is there, somewhere. She is wearing her Converse sneakers, and barreling along at a sprint, not bothering to pace herself in the slightest. She stops to pull off her flannel shirt and tie it around her waist, and she continues to run. She's wearing a thin white tank top and jean shorts- it's warm for May, and warm from running like she is running. Kerry goes and goes and goes as much as she can, and then she turns to go, figuring that she has gotten whatever it is out of her system (for now).

And then she runs crash smack into him.

He topples backwards onto the dark, worn sidewalk almost comically, looking extremely stunned. She lands on top of him. Kerry can hear him breathing heavily out of shock.

"Hi," she says, because what else can you do?

Almost automatically, without him realizing the gesture, he pushes a heavy coil of hair out of her face. He places it back behind one of her ears, and this must be more significant than it seems, right?

"Thanks," she says, and clambers off him, then reaches a hand to him when she is upright. "It's the polite thing to do," she mutters at the look on his face which she finds impossible to read.

"Right," Michel mutters, and gets up with slight assistance from her. He glances at the gates of the park, which are very much closed. "Why are you here, then?"

Kerry looks at him, really looks. He is pale enough that she thinks that he has not fed in a day, and his hair is mussed. His bottom lip looks like he has been worrying it with his teeth. It is raw and red.

"I couldn't sleep."

He laughs at her. "Such a human problem, insomnia."

The way he says that, human, makes her remember yet again that he is not.

"I'm sure you have your own problems, Michel," she says. "You needn't necessarily bother with mine. I'm sure that they're just silly little things, human problems. Like dust compared to your brilliant, luminous immortal self."

He blinks; rocks back on his heels. "That was harsh," and his tone is implausibly mild.

"Go fuck yourself," Kerry mutters, coating her words with venom. He hears her.

"Can't," he says, with mirth.

She doesn't know why he kisses her; she just knows that he does. He tastes like nothing, and his hands are cool on her back. She is sure she is flushed from her sprint around the park. She must feel feverish in comparison to him. She has blood, warmth, and she is alive.

He is not what he once was (and she still doesn't know what that is.)

She cannot think of a better reason to break away, but he lingers on her lips.

That caress, that feeling, she can sense it, and it remains for days.

**6) I'll kiss you awake**

Her new boyfriend is blond, blue-eyed, tall, strong- and entirely human. Kerry can put her head on his chest and hear his steady, unfaltering heartbeat; his cheeks are always slightly flushed with his own blood; he can walk with her through the streets at noon and only chance slight sunburn, not death. She tells herself that she is happy, that she is satisfied, but in the middle of the night when she is lying alone in a too-hot bed in a room with faulty air conditioning, the most that she can come up with is that she really doesn't mind him that much.

Still, she can't bring herself to break it off, because what if she runs into Michel again in the dead of night, what then? She can't, won't, shouldn't end up in his bed, in his arms, listening to his slow heartbeat against his too-cool chest, trying to pretend to herself that they'll wake up in the morning together and make breakfast together and walk down the street holding hands, or some picture similar to that.

She deserves that picture, doesn't she, after years and years of dealing with this particular annoying vampire who likes messing with her emotions and enjoys sneaking up on her and screwing up her love life in seconds. Next time she sees him she vows that she will hit him hard, slap his cheek, punch his jaw, kick his shin, knee him in the groin, and she knows that she won't.

She goes away with her boyfriend to visit Boston for a weekend. They stay in a charming bed-and-breakfast and she listens to his heart through the cotton of his Columbia t-shirt. He brings her breakfast in bed, snitched from the Continental spread downstairs. They walk around holding hands, and the sunlight hits her hair, making it sparkle.

It feels wrong, and Kerry is utterly miserable. She explains it away by saying that she misses her brother and she misses the city, which is an untruth: she misses a certain someone in the city, and who is she trying to kid anyways besides herself?

She does a shitty job of that and on the train ride back to New York City she tries to revel in the normalcy of the afternoon train to Penn Station (she hates that place so much) and watching the sun play through the window. She tries to revel in the normalcy of touching his hand and feeling the warmth there.

It should be someone else. She should be on a night train, watching the moonlight play across his skin through the window. His hand should be callused and cool.

Kerry never considers the in between, because she has made up her mind that Michel cannot and will not take that chance. He is a vampire, and she doesn't even know the process of why he won't do it, but she has herself situated pretty well in Michel's head by now, doesn't she, and she can guess at how he thinks by now and sometimes she even guesses right. He is very set in his ways.

She doesn't allow herself to hope, either, because that would just be plain false and who knew where it would lead. Heartbreak is not something she looks forward to.

(She knows it's inevitable, that she'll run into him again, but for now Kerry allows herself her fantasy.)


End file.
